This month we’re going to be doing some MessageFocus detective work as I show you how to locate contacts in your core table using filters. Don’t worry, no magnifying glass or typewriter required!

Filtering data in your core table
The Support team are often asked whether they can find a contact in a core table within MessageFocus. It’s usually the case that the user has searched the core table for the email address and has been unable to find it. This happens when the recipient has provided a different, or slightly different, email address to that which is contained in the core table.

If you don’t have the full or correct email address, don’t panic, you can filter the data in your core table to find the right contact. For example, I have two email addresses at Adestra: jim@adestra.com and jim.ellis@adestra.com. To find my email addresses, I can do the following:

Click “˜Data’ to the top right of the screen and then click on “˜Core Tables’, which then appears in the black bar to the left of the screen.

Click on the core table to be filtered and then click the “˜Browse’ tab.

You can then click thebutton to add a filter to the data.

In this scenario, I’ve added the filter to request that the data returned contains “˜adestra’ in the email field

The results returned includes all email addresses which contain “˜adestra’:

So you can see here that both my email addresses are returned in the results and I can now click on the one which I need to amend, remove from a list or add to an unsubscribe list, etc.

The idea of using filters to locate email addresses in MessageFocus data lists can really come in handy when you don’t have the full or correct address. This principle can be used on core and data tables as well as lists using the “˜Filter Contacts’ button detailed above. You can also match text by a range of different values such as:

First name

Surname

Domain (this one may present you with a lot of results)

I trust that you find these tips useful, however, if you have a suggestion for a tip for a future blog, please feel free to email it to jim.ellis@adestra.com.
Look out for another 3 Top Tips next month and, as always, good luck with your email marketing endeavours.